Wallabies captain James Horwill cleared to play in Lions decider

Australia's captain James Horwill fields questions in Sydney after being cleared of a stamping charge which would have ruled him out of Saturday's decider against the British & Irish Lions. Photograph: Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images

Tuesday 2 July 2013 10.19 EDT
First published on Tuesday 2 July 2013 10.19 EDT

The Lions have lost their captain but Australia still have theirs. James Horwill has been cleared to start in the third and final Test on Saturday. After almost 12 hours of deliberation, the independent appeal officer, Graeme Mew, ruled that the earlier decision to find Horwill not guilty of stamping on Alun Wyn Jones in the first Test was the right one.

Horwill said he felt "very relieved" and "very vindicated" by Mew's decision. "It means a hell of a lot to me to lead Australia in what is the biggest game in this country since the 2003 World Cup final." He praised both judicial hearings as "thorough and fair", thanked the public for their support, and added, pointedly: "Now it is time to get on with the football".

The IRB, which brought the appeal against the decision made by Nigel Hampton QC, may not be able to move on quite so easily. There has been an angry response towards the decision to launch the appeal, with Fox Sports stoking up a "Justice for Horwill" campaign, and the Daily Telegraph lambasting the IRB as the "Idiotic Rugby Board".

In Hampton's original ruling, Horwill was found not guilty on the grounds that the QC agreed with the player's argument that he had been knocked off balance and had unwittingly hit Jones' head with his boot. On appeal, Mew decided that there was no evidence that Hampton was "manifestly wrong" in reaching that judgment.

As Robbie Deans pointed out, the IRB's fairness and thoroughness should be applauded. But the flip side of their fastidiousness is that it caused an inordinate amount of time and a considerable sum of money to be wasted, and caused real disruption to Australia's preparation for both the second and third Test matches.

Horwill did not sleep at all while he was waiting for the verdict overnight and said that he "wouldn't like to see another player go through" what he had endured. Australia's coach reckoned that "the energy around the team has definitely lifted" since Horwill was cleared. Deans said: "You don't like the uncertainty and the doubt. We have now got clarity, we can push on and give us the best preparation for the weekend." He added that the team were "stoked" to have back their "spiritual leader".

The Lions, via the tour manager Andy Irvine, claimed that the decision was "no great shakes" before adding that "as far as we're concerned, once a judicial officer gave his decision last week we were of the view that it was done and dusted; let's move on."

While Irvine reiterated that on television the incident had not looked good, he insisted that the IRB's appeal had not been instigated by any Lions complaint after Horwill was initially cleared.

That appeal indirectly called into doubt Hampton's competence as a judicial officer as well as Horwill's character. As Mew explained "for the appeal to succeed the IRB would have had to establish that there was some misapprehension of law or principle by the judicial officer or that his decision was so clearly wrong or manifestly unreasonable that no judicial officer could have reached the conclusion that he did." They did not do either.

That the IRB should try at all seems a little odd, given that it appointed Hampton in the first place and that he is an extremely well-respected QC. Among his many other accomplishments, he was the first disciplinary commissioner for the International Criminal court in The Hague, and the Chief Justice of Tonga. They argue that they were simply looking to "ensure player welfare and to protect the image and the reputation of the game".

To understand why the IRB intervened you have to go back four years, to the last Lions tour of South Africa in 2009. In the second Test Schalk Burger was shown a yellow card for gouging the eye of the Ireland winger Luke Fitzgerald. Burger was later given an eight-week ban, which was considerably more lenient than the 12-week ban the IRB recommended for such cases. In the ensuing uproar, the board promised to review the citing process and introduce a power of appeal that would prevent similar escapes. The proposal was discussed at the IRB's morality conference in London last March, and the IRB's power of appeal came into the regulations last June.

It was used for the first time in November, when New Zealand's Adam Thomson was banned for one week after he was found guilty of stamping on Alasdair Strokosch's head during a Test against Scotland at Murrayfield. In that case the judicial officer decided Thomson's offence was worth a two-week ban, but that it should be cut in half because of his good conduct during the hearing. Brett Gosper, the new Australian chief executive of the IRB, announced on Twitter that the board would review the decision, fulfilling his promise to engage in public debate with fans and the media. He has been noticeably less voluble in the past week.

Thomson's two-week ban was duly restored. This was the kind of error the IRB's new power of appeal was designed to rectify. "The objective of the regulation," reads the rule book, is to "achieve consistency and uniformity." But last week's decision to challenge the verdict reached by Hampton on Horwill has proved much more contentious. It is believed to have sparked debate within the IRB itself about whether the power of appeal was being used in the way it was intended. Horwill was, in effect, tried twice for the same crime, though no new evidence had come to light and no one had any reason to question the competency of the man who made the original decision.

Incensed, the Australian Rugby Union brought in Steve Cottrell to help argue its case. Horwill pointedly picked him out for thanks. Cottrell was formerly the general counsel of the New Zealand Rugby Union and is still contracted to it as a strategic adviser. It is understood that the NZRU specifically encouraged him to help out the ARU because it too is aggrieved at the way the IRB has used the new power of appeal.

Deans actually served as one of the coaching representatives on that IRB morality conference that debated the changes. He said he has "no doubt" that the IRB will review the entire farrago, as "they review routinely what they do." In the meantime, he added, "we have got more important, more exciting, things to do." Amen to that.